Quantum Slipstream Speed Question

[kirk55555]

I'm sorry if this is some obvious thing, but searching through google, memory beta, etc really hasn't given me an answer. Going by the bits in Voyager and the current Novelverse stuff,

How long does it take a ship with Quantum Slipstream Drive to get from, say, the Alpha Quadrant to the delta Quadrant?

In Voyager's finale, they seemed to get home after a few minutes, but that was in a borg invented travel system. I know the novels have Project Full Circle who seem to casually travel between the quadrants, but I can't seem to find if its a trip of a few minutes, or a few hours, days, weeks, etc. It can't be that long because it doesn't seem like its a huge deal to them (and I think Starfleet even offered to take Odo back to the Gamma Quadrant with a QSS installed ship when the wormhole was gone for awhile in the books, so it seems like its not much of a hassle), but I am curious if its just a matter of minutes or if its more of a moderate length "trip" of a few weeks or more.

I know the actual answer to this is "it takes as long as the plot wants", but I'm just curious if there is a ballpark estimate of how long a trip takes with the Quantum Slipstream Drive.

 

[Kemaiku]

Slipstream and Transwarp are totally different propulsion methods.

The Dauntless travelled in 15 minutes what would have taken Voyager 3 days by warp 9.975 to cover. It should be possible to work it out from there. Federation slipstream like the Vesta class still can't compete with that speed, but they can cover in weeks what it took decades to before.

The Borg in the novels had 6 transwarp "hubs" built onto the surface of specially treated stars. Forming a network of incredibly high powered conduits that couldn't be produced by ships alone, allowing the fastest travel other than Caelier spatial conduits and Spore drive. Voyager caused a chain reaction that destroyed them all.

 

[kirk55555]

Oh, ok. I figured there had to be a difference between what the Federation is doing and what the borg did, but I didn't know exactly what. So, basically it takes a matter of weeks to get from, say the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant. That's still really fast compared to warp speeds obviously, but far enough away that its a moderately long trip. Thanks for the info.

 

[C.E. Evans]

A ballpark figure for slipstream is probably around 300 light-years an hour (more or less).

 

[DSG2k]

The Dauntless traveled fifteen light-years very quickly, requiring Voyager to travel two days at "high warp" (around factor seven, by my figuring) to reach them.

The ship's false history was of 60,000 light-years in three months. That's a sustained 20,000 ly/mo, 657 ly/day, 27.3 ly/hr, or 240,000c.

 

[Kemaiku]

Two days, okay. I remember it taking them a while to catch up, pity they didn't give a specific speed.

There's also a portion of the Destiny trilogy where the Aventine and Enterprise travel to the other side of the galaxy through the conduits, I don't recall if Dax mentioned how long it would take them to get home if the conduit wasn't available.

 

[valkyrie013]

It depends on the episode, and even the whim of the writer if your in a novel. In my "Head Cannon" I like to keep with the "Slower" Qss speed of that 30 ly/hr speed, because I REALLY don't want star trek to go the Star Wars route with I can get to the other side of the galaxy in minutes speed. (Ludicrous speed.. GO!)
Even in the "full circle" book series, its kind of all over the road, first books its "Hang on everybody were on this wild rapids ride for a few hours to go 40,000 ly" to in newer books it takes a couple of weeks to get 20,000 ly.. As you said, speed of plot as always.
At "Ludicrous" speed you can now start going to other galaxy's in weeks instead of century's!

I have an idea i'm noodling around with is that there might be an expidition to the Large Megelanic Cloud in the Early 25th century, and in my thinking, I'm using the slower QSS speed, and it taking 6 months to get up there. probably more dropping Subspace buoys and "taking the scenic route"

 

[Timo]

The TOS movie novelizations spoke of expeditions to the nearby dwarf galaxies already - something quite possibly doable in mere decades with standard warp drive, but obviously categorically different from what starships are usually seen doing. Sort of like the polar expeditions of yore, as contrasting with what the navies of the time were mostly engaged in.

For all we know, such things did happen. It's just that if any of those brave explorers got back, they'd upstage Janeway. But the novels never suggest they did.

As regards slipstream, it is very convenient in being portrayed as extremely risky. It wouldn't take much of a change in mission parameters to have our heroes decide that they need to go ten times slower this time around, rather than risk everything the way they did last week. Then again, standard warp already had some of this in TOS already, with Scotty thinking going past warp seven will kill them all but Kirk calmly pressing on and always rolling sevens (while other skippers attempting the same did pay the price?).

Timo Saloniemi